Re: OT Humour, The Stella Awards

Jeff wrote:
"Bob (this one)" <Bob@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:119m9gvcuvm6sa0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

tonywesley@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Bob (this one) wrote:
Also, though people like to make fun of it, there was some
merit in her case and 12 ordinary jurors found so. The
problem was not that she spilled coffee on herself but that
it was 20 to 30 degrees hotter than it should have been and
thus caused much more damage than it would have had it been
at the around the correct temperature.



Oh, bull***. Get your facts straight. The temperature was
exactly what the manufacturer set at the factory. Just like
every other Bunn coffeemaker they make.


I note that your citation below doesn't dispute the comments above.
Just injects a lot of emotional rhetoric.

You can read an account here:

http://www.vanfirm.com/mcdonalds-coffee-lawsuit.htm

Of course, this is reprinted from that notorious liberal
anti-business newspaper, "The Wall Street Journal."


Oh, do go read it and savor the objectivity of the reporting and
the accuracy of her reporting. Says, "...McDonald's sells a billion
cups a year." Waaaaay overstated. But if it were true, the 700
complaints are cumulative from the previous ten years. Let's step
it way down and say they sell a billion a year. That would be 10
billion cups of coffee. Ten billion. 10,000,000,000 cups of coffee.
700 complaints. For everyone who was burned, more than 14 million
others weren't.



That is making the assumption that everytime someone is burnt, (s)he
 complains. This is probably not true.

McDonalds has nearly 14,000 restaurants in the US. If they sell 200
cups of coffee a day, on average, then that works out to around
1,000,000,000 cups of coffee a year. And they have about 31,000
restaurants overall. So that works out to around 100 cups of coffee
per restaurant world wide. So 1,000,000,000 cups of coffee a year
seems quite reasonable.

The exact numbers aren't that important, I was just making reference to
order of magnitude. McD's didn't have all those outlets for all those
years, so numbers would be skewed, but that's not at issue, either. And, yes, most probably not everyone who was burned complained.

But the overriding point is the sheer magnitude of the universe in
question versus the problems in it. I still can't grasp the intelligence
behind McD's having responsibility after they no longer have control.
You buy a cup of coffee presumably knowing it's hot and spill it on
yourself. McD's served coffee exactly like every other place that serves
coffee, but they're responsible. The number of burns from everybody else is unknown, so no contrast can be made and no context can be offered. I still think that McD's had lousy lawyers.

Pastorio
.